"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... act when those on the stage cease that occupation, gave a splendid imitation of the historic last scene at the Tower of Babel. Having accomplished this to its evident satisfaction, the audience proceeded, like the closing phrase of the "Goetterdaemmerung" Dead March, to become ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... By the phrase "Change of Life," or "The Critical Period," we understand the final cessation or stoppage of the menses. This chapter explains all about this trying time, the symptoms of its appearance, and the ages at which ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... journal just now when I came across the remark that "one would as soon think of drinking beer out of porcelain as of slapping Nietzsche on the back." Drinking beer out of porcelain! The phrase amused me, and set me idly wondering why you don't drink beer out of porcelain. You drink it (assuming that you drink it at all) with great enjoyment out of a thick earthenware mug or a pewter pot or a vessel of glass, but ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... carin' a cuss Ef it helps ary party thet ever wuz heard on, So our eagle ain't made a split Austrian bird on. But ther' 's still some conservative signs to be found Thet shows the gret heart o' the People is sound: (Excuse me for usin' a stump-phrase agin, But, once in the way on 't, they will stick like sin:) There's Phillips, for instance, hez jes' ketched a Tartar In the Law-'n'-Order Party of ole Cincinnater; An' the Compromise System ain't gone out o' reach, Long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... your affections upon one particular peach or nectarine, watch it with some anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a sensible disappointment when it is taken by some one else. I have used the phrase "high passion." Well, I should say this was about as high a passion as generally leads to marriage. One husband hears after marriage that some poor fellow is dying of his wife's love. "What a pity!" he exclaims; "you know I could so easily have got another!" And ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on behalf of poor John Eames that he had not ever spoken to Amelia—he had not spoken to her in any such phrase as her words seemed to imply. But then he had written to her a fatal note of which we will speak further before long, and that perhaps was ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the art of breathing properly is fundamental for the proper production of the singing voice and the speaking voice of the orator. It is necessary always to maintain in the lungs, which act as the bellows, a sufficient reserve of air to finish a phrase; therefore when the opportunity arises it is desirable to take in as much air as possible through the nostrils, and without any apparent effort; the expenditure of the air in the lungs must be controlled and regulated by the power of the will in such a manner as to produce efficiency in loudness ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... oxen, oils, and wines, not money. Today, the devout offer a sacrifice of money to the Deity. We are all familiar with the requests of religious institutions for gifts, which nearly always finish with the phrase, "And the Lord will repay you many fold." In other words, sacrifice part of your worldly goods to the idol, and he will repay with high interest. He will give in return long life and much riches. The savage was afraid to utter the real name of his god, it was taboo. The modern ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... praestantissimi equi. And, shades of Bunsen! how many thousand years of hard food shall we add to the account for our horses' Egyptian ancestry? Moses and Miriam sang their dirge on the shore of the Red Sea, in the reign of a mediaeval Pharaoh, but their "early progenitors," as Mr. Darwin would phrase it, might have enjoyed the barley of the ancient King Menes. To hard food we must add early work, for the Arab is worked ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... the topography of Middleshire in a county-guide, which spoke highly, as the phrase is, of Lackley Park, and took up our abode, our journey ended, at a wayside inn where, in the days of leisure, the coach must have stopped for luncheon and burnished pewters of rustic ale been handed up as straight as possible to outsiders athirst with the sense of speed. We stopped ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... little blank verse, and the indisposition had so far affected her mind that she had no memory of Parnassus, but deliriously maintained that she had been born in the home counties—nay, in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge. Her every phrase was a deplorable commonplace, and, on the physician applying a stethoscope and begging her to attempt some verse, she could give us nothing better than a sonnet upon the expansion of the Empire. Her ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... realizing the larger issues. But in your ambition to attach that poor girl to the chariot-wheels of Progress'—his voice put the drag of ironic pomposity upon the phrase—'you quite ignore the fact that people fitter for such work, the men you look to enlist in the end, are ready waiting'—he pulled himself up in time for an anti-climax—'to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... change: it remained for his sister Nannie to do that when, on his return to the Rue de Rivoli, where the family were still sitting in conclave upon their recent visitor, Miss Durham summed up their groping comments in the phrase: "I never saw ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... This single phrase, Repressa in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat, proves that the Christians had already attracted the attention of the government; and that Nero was not the first to persecute them. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... nothing he did not discuss, in memorable phrase and trenchant, clever epigram. For he saw that I believed in him, worshipped whole-heartedly at his shrine of genius, and he gave me, in return, of his best. For the first time I saw what human language is for. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... continuous warfare resulted in a population in which women predominated, and we are told that in the interest of procreation both childlessness and celibacy were severely punished. Thus the situation of women was that best described by the phrase "between the devil and ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... first to speak. He was a grey-haired, broad-shouldered man, of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the self-important gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his brow and mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from the hasty workmanship which Nature ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... should be long deferred, they should scoff, saying, where is the promise of his coming? Then he describes the sudden coming of the day of the Lord upon them, as a thief in the night, which is the Apocalyptic phrase; and the millennium, or thousand years, which are with God but as a day; the passing away of the old heavens and earth, by a conflagration in the lake of fire, and our looking for new heavens and a new ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... popular man in France, and from him largely emanated the influences which replaced Charles X. with Louis Philippe. He was not a man of great abilities, but was generally respected as an honest man. He was most marked for practical sagacity and love of constitutional liberty. The phrase, "a monarchical government surrounded with republican institutions," is ascribed to him,—an illogical expression, which called out the sneers of Carlyle, whose sympathies were with strong governments and with the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... certain train of morbid ideas which connect themselves with the sight of this beautiful town. There are few persons perhaps moving in good English society, whose ears do not familiarly recognise the hopeless phrase of "being sent to die at Nice," and many have watched the departure of the wrecks of what was once health, strength, and beauty, consigned to this painted sepulchre with the certainty of never returning from it. Thus the very efficacy of the air of Nice, which has brought it into vogue when all ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of her humour when she was in a taunting mood to call the Queen always 'your Grace' or 'your Majesty' at every turn of the phrase. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... that matter they are old friends!" replied Orsola, adopting the porter's phrase for want of one which could express the meaning she had in her ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... seemed to agree that I had had my fling, and should, as they persisted in calling it, "settle down." A most odious phrase. They were two to one against me, and when one finished another took it up. So that at last I ceased arguing and allowed myself to be bullied into looking for ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... appeal. And as he went on and on with increasing fervour and power a marvellous change transfigured that heavy face, it shone with a white light and spiritual feeling, as if he fully realized his communion with God Himself. I used to think of that phrase in Matthew: ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... "looked at in the right way, that is in thy way, the thing is simple." I think he would have liked to add, "as lying," but as the phrase would have involved explanations, did not. "Yet, Ayesha," he went on, "hast thou thought that this discovery of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... his master's interest. Not that be refuseth a brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. For this reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... III. in this transaction has been discussed by writers of both parties with such candor that the Tory historian, Lord Stanhope, while evidently desirous to defend it by implication, passes a slight censure on it in the phrase that "the course pursued by the King was most unusual, and most extreme, and most undesirable to establish as a precedent;"[89] while, on the other hand, so rigid a Whig as Lord Campbell urges in his favor "that if it be ever excusable in a King of England to cabal against his ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the depths of the revelers' hearts some struggling glimmer of reverence for things divine and human, until it was drowned in glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had been crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais' phrase, had "taken possession of ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... bands of red (top), white, and black with three green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; the phrase ALLAHU AKBAR (God is Great) in green Arabic script - Allahu to the right of the middle star and Akbar to the left of the middle star - was added in January 1991 during the Persian Gulf crisis; similar to the flag of Syria which ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 56. posse comitatus. Arnold's phrase refers to the medieval institution of the "power of the county." It originally consisted of a county's able-bodied males over fifteen, and the local authorities might call upon it to preserve order. Later, the posse became an instrument of ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... "The phrase, a reasonable time, is very indeterminate," said Wallingford. "It may include one, or ten years, according to the facts in the case, the views of the executors and ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... Several charters still remain in which kings and persons of great eminence affix "signum crucis pro ignoratione literarum," the sign of the cross, because of their ignorance of letters. From this is derived the phrase of signing instead of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... with "the whole of things" which will be combated in the following discussions; it is precisely "the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's name" to which they offer a plain and direct challenge. At the same time such a phrase as that in which Professor James speaks of God as working "in an external environment" would seem unduly to under-emphasise the fact of immanence; and it may be said at once that the theory of Divine finitude put forward by the present writer will be seen ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to make him something lower than yourself." The child remembered that phrase, and he felt that this was indeed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... It is necessary to begin at the beginning. From the first Burton took up his work at Damascus with "pinioned arms," to use his own phrase. In other words, he started with a prejudice against him. Lord Derby (then Lord Stanley), as we know, gave him the appointment; but before it was confirmed Lord Clarendon succeeded Lord Stanley at the Foreign Office, and in the interval ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Contemporary observers of events are not always the best judges of their significance, yet we shall hardly be mistaken if we assert that without doubt we stand at one of the turning points of the world's long story, that the phrase used of another epoch-making moment is true of this one, "Old things are passing away, all things are becoming new." For history is presenting us in these days with a clean slate, and to the men of this generation is given the opportunity for making a fresh start such as ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... cause of infused virtue, to which this definition applies; and this is expressed in the words "which God works in us without us." If we omit this phrase, the remainder of the definition will apply to all virtues in general, whether ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... existence, even in a more or less inglorious obscurity, leavens the entire lump of humanity. Mr. Mullen, who regarded him with the active suspicion with which he viewed all living examples of Christian charity, spoke of him condescendingly as a "man of impracticable ideas"—a phrase which introduced his index prohibitory of opinions. But the old clergyman, having attained a serviceable sense of humour, as well as a heavenly fortitude, went on quietly doing good after the fashion in which he was made. In his impracticable ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... especial knowledge of a profession, calling, or trade, by the practice of which he can maintain himself. If all boys and lads were impressed with this important practical truth, how many might be saved from ruin, from "going to the dogs," as the phrase is, simply because they have no honest means of supporting themselves. I say this here, because I may otherwise forget to say it elsewhere, and I am very anxious to impress it on the minds of my readers. We had two men on board the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... own publisher to promise to take The Major Key and to engage to pay a considerable sum down, as the phrase is, on the presumption of its attracting attention. This was good news for the evening's end at Mrs. Highmore's when there were only four or five left and cigarettes ran low; but there was better news to come, and I have never forgotten how, as it was I who had ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... che si giuoca" is a phrase which refers to the system of the public lotteries, {300} established (so much to their shame) by the Italian governments; and a page of explanation of that system would be needful, to make any literal translation of it intelligible ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... 18: The song was printed separately in 1521 as Ain new lied herr Vlrichs von Hutten. The phrase ich habs gewagt, translating the Latin jacta est alea, became a sort of motto with Hutten after he had taken, in the fall of 1520, the momentous step of defending Luther and advocating a German war of liberation. 19: Mit sinnen, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... the money market," in great doubt whether railway shares can possibly fall lower,—for Mr. Squills, happy man! has large savings, and does not know what to do with his money, or, to use his own phrase, "how to buy in at the cheapest in order to sell out ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these men for "preaching the gospel contrary to law," a deep and solemn voice interrupted the proceedings. Patrick Henry had come on horseback many a mile over roughest roads to listen to the trial, and this phrase, which savoured of the religious despotisms of old, was quite too much for him. "May it please your worships," he exclaimed, "what did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these men, whom your worships are about to try for misdemeanour, are charged with ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... franchise negotiations came to an impasse, the British Government announced (September 22nd) that their demands and scheme for a "final settlement of the issues created by the policy of the Republic"—a phrase which pointed to something more than the redress of grievances—would be presented to the Republic. These demands, however, never were presented at all. After an interval of seventeen days from the announcement just ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... purpose—to please and to be praised; and to gain those ends he sacrificed consistency and discretion with a light heart. The beauty of his person and the fluent splendor of his speech went far towards the attainment of an ambition which was always frustrated by a fatal levity. In the fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate for contradictory honors, and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be certainly wrong therefore to consider the legal phrase, to "compass or imagine the death of the king," as meaning the same thing as to "kill, or intend to kill" him. At all events we may take it for granted, that to "compass" does not mean to accomplish; ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... often do, with a woman's more utter self-abasement a larger measure of critical penetration. The "poor tired wandering singer," who so humbly took the hand of the liberal and princely giver, and who with perfect sincerity applied to herself his unconscious phrase— ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... discovers new ones; that matter is a reservoir of unknown forces, and that it is not impossible that the origin of psychical forces may yet be discovered in matter. This idea is clearly hinted at by Littre. The physicist Tyndall gave it a definite formula when he uttered at the Belfast Congress this phrase so often quoted: "If I look back on the limits of experimental science, I can discern in the bosom of that matter (which, in our ignorance, while at the same time professing our respect for its Creator, we have, till now, ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... hills, writing his stories, dreaming over his piano, and sleeping deep and restfully under the great arch of the stars. Jerry had had a cold four years ago—"just a mean cold," had been the doctor's cheerful phrase; but what terror it struck to the hearts that loved Jerry! Molly's eyes, flashing to his mother's eyes, had said: "Like his father—like his aunt—like the little sister who died!" And for the first time Jerry's ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... pasteboard box containing a dozen boutonnieres under his arm. He laid one on the table cloth by each plate, and stood back to enjoy the effect. He rubbed his hands softly in appreciation of the "color scheme" as he termed it—a phrase that puzzled Augustus. He saw no "scheme" and very little "color" in the dark-wainscoted room, except the cheerful fire on the hearth and some heavy red half-curtains at the windows to shut out the cold and dark of this March night. The walls were white; the grill of dark wood, and the floor painted ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... You listen to a conversation carried on in an open spot, from which your mischievous ears manage to detach the phrase "to-night." My explanation, if I am called upon to make ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... churls of England as yet sunk so low as at a later stage. Still some legislation was needed to settle the relations of the two races. King William proclaimed the "renewal of the law of King Edward." This phrase has often been misunderstood; it is a common form when peace and good order are restored after a period of disturbance. The last reign which is looked back to as to a time of good government becomes the standard of good government, ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... by George Manville Fenn, full of mystery, suspense and terror—to coin a phrase. Ned, a boy of sixteen, who has just left school, and who has been brought up by an uncle who is a naturalist and who is often away, begs that he may be allowed to come on the uncle's next expedition. By the way, how could he have been brought up by an uncle who was ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... was the one who "didst weaken the nations" and who "made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners." Every phrase in this remarkable passage is a revelation. Undoubtedly there is reference here both to the fall of man and to the authority of Satan in the earth, as well as to his attitude of resistance toward salvation which is by the grace of God, since it is said ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... talk, he talks to the point and with a vivid and direct picturesqueness of phrase which is as refreshing as it is unexpected. The delightful remodeling of the English language in Mr. Alfred Lewis's "Wolfville" is exaggerated only in quantity, not in quality. No cowboy talks habitually in quite as original a manner as Mr. Lewis's Old Cattleman; but I have no doubt that in time ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... replied Herr Haase, in his parade voice. "But we have also a phrase-code, a short phrase for every word of the message which passes. It makes the telegram ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... try to make things easy for them. He was hungry and easily annoyed. It was sound training tactics to be severe, and to phrase all suggestions as commands. He put the four young men in command of the ship in turn, under his direction. He continued to use Weald as a destination, but he set up problems in which the Med Ship came out of overdrive pointing in an unknown ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... note, leading note, fundamental note; supertonic^, mediant^, dominant; submediant^, subdominant^; octave, tetrachord^; major key, minor key, major scale, minor scale, major mode, minor mode; passage, phrase. concord, harmony; emmeleia^; unison, unisonance^; chime, homophony; euphony, euphonism^; tonality; consonance; consent; part. [Science of harmony] harmony, harmonics; thorough-bass, fundamental-bass; counterpoint; faburden^. piece of music ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... querra?" demanded Bascomb, who had picked up a phrase or two of Spanish during his conversations ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... effect; and for more than twenty years Roswell Gardiner has been a very successful miller, on a large scale, in one of the western counties of what is called "the Empire State." We do not think the sobriquets of this country very happy, in general, but shall quarrel less with this, than with the phrase of "commercial emporium," which is much as if one should ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pemberton. He's from old Kentucky, too. You see," said Thad, hardly able to phrase a connected story in his excitement, "the folks he was livin' with broke up, and he was left with nary a home. Now, I'd been keepin' house on the shanty-boat old The.—I mean your father, give me when he was carried off to the hospital. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... a backward step. Her breath came sharply. In this man's absurd confusion there was written plainer than his uncompleted words could phrase it, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... was held by our highest judicial tribunal that the phrase "we the people," in the Declaration of Independence, did not include slaves, who were excluded from the inherent rights recited therein and accounted divine and inalienable, embracing, of course, the right of self-government, which ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Private Outdoor Relief. By outdoor relief we mean relief given to the poor outside of an institution. Usually, outdoor relief refers simply to the public relief of dependents outside of institutions, but we shall use the phrase to cover both public and private relief. It is evident from what has already been said that the class of persons to whom this form of relief is appropriate are those in temporary distress, whose condition of dependence is not a permanent one and, therefore, usually those whose condition is due ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... drei." In one of my lectures, on returning to England, I mentioned that as the Eskimos had never seen a lamb or a sheep either alive or in a picture, the Moravians, in order to offer them an intelligible and appealing simile, had most wisely substituted the kotik, or white seal, for the phrase "the Lamb of God." One old lady in my audience must have felt that the good Brethren were tampering unjustifiably with Holy Writ, for the following summer, from the barrels of clothing sent out to the Labrador, was extracted ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... environment. Sukey's parents were good, honest folk, but wholly unfitted to bring up a daughter. Sukey at fourteen was quite mature, and gave evidence of beauty so marked as to attract men twice her age, who "kept company" with her, as the phrase went, sat with her till late in the night, took her out to social gatherings, and—God help the girl, she was not to blame. She did only as others did, as her parents permitted; and her tender little heart, so prone to fondness, proved to be a curse rather than the blessing it would have been if ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine—"a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... moderation that is due equally to my respect for the memory of a brother-artist, and to my self-respect, I confine myself to placing on record here the facts—That Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in this book. That Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written. That I believe I never saw Mr. Seymour's handwriting in my life. That I never saw Mr. Seymour but once in my life, and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it curious," she went on, breathlessly, "how a new bit of slang always fills a vacant place in the language? The minute you hear it you know it's what you've always wanted. I suppose the reason we're obliged to use the current phrase is because it expresses the current need. When the hour passes, the need passes with it, and something new must be coined to meet the new situation. I should think a most interesting book might be written on the Psychology of Slang, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... to talk as if repenting a previous folly. The scene, in so far as the Prince is concerned, is badly conducted. When he yields to Poins and agrees to rob Falstaff, his words are: "Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us,"—a phrase which hardly shows wild spirits or high courage, or even the faculty of judging men, and the soliloquy which ends the scene lamely enough is not the Prince's, but Shakespeare's, and unfortunately Shakespeare the poet, and not Shakespeare ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... that poor Father De Rance was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced that I was not, in their own phrase, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... matters with which not a single member might, possibly, be acquainted. They did not aim at an ideal perfection, but were satisfied with doing what was practicable, and with a large average of general prosperity. To each civitas—corresponding to our phrase of "city and county"—was assigned the regulation of its own domestic policy, by means of annual magistrates, a chosen senate, and the general assembly of the free inhabitants. Through this wise policy of ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... joint agreement that sets out the spending priorities within the available revenues? And let's remember our deadline is October 1st, not Christmas. Let's get the people's work done in time to avoid a footrace with Santa Claus. And, yes, this year—to coin a phrase—a new beginning: 13 individual bills, on time and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... phrase. I daresay it was something of a blow to his pride in the Force to learn that such deviltry had actually been fathered by one of his trusted officers; something the same sorrowful anger that stirs a man when one of his own kin goes wrong. Then, as if he were half-ashamed ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... may be translated thus: "Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?" This phrase, "the Man of my Heart," is not peculiar to this song, but is usual with the Bauel sect. It means that, for me, the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the Infinite ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... had come to breakfast on the morning of the 18th Brumaire, according to Madame Bonaparte's invitation, he would have been one of the members of the Government. But Gohier acted the part of the stern republican. He placed himself, according to the common phrase of the time, astride of the Constitution of the year III.; and as his steed made a sad ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a hearty meal. One source of regret to us, was, that the natives began to like our bread, which heretofore they had scarcely dared to taste; and particularly the woman whom I called mistress, ate, to use a sea phrase, her full allowance. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... Costard-monger, is a dealer in apples, which are so called because they are shaped like a costard, i.e. a man's head. Steevens.—Johnson explains the phrase eloquently: "In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness, that rates the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... saw her in the dining car. Her companions were elderly persons—presumably her parents. They talked mostly in French—occasionally using a German word or phrase. The old gentleman was stately and austere—with an air of deference to the young woman which Grenfall did not understand. His appearance was very striking; his face pale and heavily lined; moustache and imperial gray; the eyebrows large and bushy, and the jaw and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to a landsman—and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose—up—up—as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui—moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs—the [Greek phrase]—and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provencal desert where one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'—a wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of architecture; where nothing seems ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... "Jackanapes"!!! Did I tell you about "Tuck of Drum"? Several people who saw the proof, pitched into me, "Never heard of such an expression." I was convinced I knew it, and as I said, as a poetical phrase; but I could not charge my memory with the quotation: and people exasperated me by regarding it as "camp slang." I got Miss S. to look in her Shakespeare's Concordance, but in vain, and she wrote severely, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... of the same sort, sir." And, casting about for another phrase with which to humour him, I took the first that came to my tongue; leaning my arms on the table (for I had finished eating), I said with a smile, "Well, what say you to this? This is something to know, isn't it? Je viens, tu viens, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... a homely phrase, he was so prostrated by the thought that, in spite of his care and the stern duties of the task that he had been set to do, he had passed some side opening by which the Indians might come down and attack the unarmed camp, that he wanted "shaking up" to bring ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Armstrong's little boy? She was by two years his senior, and for a girl she was tall; but he was more than on a level with her so far as mere height went, and the phrase cut him at the heart. She took the strawberry-pottle from her head with both hands, as if it had been a crown, and laid it on the kitchen dresser. 'I've heard my father talk of his father five hundred times. My father thinks no end of Uncle Armstrong. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... were charged with using this phrase. Gachard says that they placed at the top of their letter their titles of sheriffs and deans, as princes and lords take the title of their seignories.—(La Marche, ii., 221. See ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... being sufficient to deter the Villains from doing what they call their Duty to their Masters; for besides their Daily or Weekly Wages, they have an extraordinary stated Allowance for every Chaise they can reverse, ditch, or bring by the Road, as the Term or Phrase is. ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... lift at the gate pretty lustily to get it open; now and then they are obliged to turn a pretty sharp corner, and, perhaps, lose a little skin from a shin-bone or a knuckle-joint, but, at length, where are they? Why, you see them sitting in "the gate"—a scriptural phrase for the post of honor. Who is that judge who so adorns the bench? My Lord Mansfield, or Sir Matthew Hale, or Chief Justice Marshall? Why, and from what condition, has he reached his eminence? That was a boy who some years since was an active, persevering little fellow round the ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Especially is this the case with the pleasures and pains attendant on the exercise of the moral feelings. A man who is tormented with the recollection of having committed a great crime will, as the phrase goes, 'take pleasure in nothing;' while, similarly, a man who is enjoying the retrospect of having done his duty, in some important crisis, will care little for obloquy or even for the infliction of physical ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... Ingham-Baker appeared to slumber, but her friend and hostess suspected her of listening. She therefore raised her voice at intervals, knowing the exquisite torture of unsatisfied curiosity, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker heard the word "Fitz," and the magic syllables "money," more than once, but no connecting phrase to soothe her aching ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... of father and son, between Mr. Cary and himself. When Edward was left alone, with the passing away of his father, Clarence Cary had put his sheltering arm around the lonely boy, and with the tremendous encouragement of the phrase that the boy never forgot, "I think you have it in you, Edward, to make a successful man," he took him under his wing. It was a turning-point in Edward Bok's life, as he felt at the time and as ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... one to whom Buffon's phrase, Le style c'est l'homme meme, may be more justly applied than to M. de Maulde. His work is absolutely himself; it derives from his original personality and his wide and sure learning an historical value and a literary ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... in various Jubilee songs will show in the same song large variations in poetic feet, etc., not only from stanza to stanza; but very often from line to line, and even from phrase to phrase. Notwithstanding all this variation, a well trained band of singers will render the songs with such perfect rhythm that one scarcely realizes that the structure of any one stanza differs materially from that ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... his natural reluctance is overborne by irrepressible emotion, he attempts to hide it by a jest. So Jackson's veterans laughed at his peculiarities, at his dingy uniform, his battered cap, his respect for clergymen, his punctilious courtesy, and his blushes. They delighted in the phrase, when a distant yell was heard, "Here's "Old Jack" or a rabbit!" They delighted more in his confusion when he galloped through the shouting camp. "Here he comes," they said, "we'll make him take his hat off." They invented strange ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... April, in which Louis XVIII. agreed "that the titles and dignities of all the members of the family of the Emperor Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not be deprived of them," remained something more than a mere phrase. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Jones—it was mercifully ordained that I should not marry any one. What would my dear father have done if I had? but simply to show you how the very people we think the least of frequently become our best friends; the "weak things of the earth confounding those that are mighty," in scripture phrase.' ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... alone preserved his courage: 'he was very restless in the Condemned Hole,' though 'he gave little or no attention to the condemned Sermon which the purblind Ordinary preached before him,' and which was, in Fielding's immortal phrase, 'unto the Greeks foolishness.' But in the moment of death his distinction returned to him. He tried, and failed, to kill himself; and his progress to the nubbing cheat was a triumph of execration. He reached ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Many a poet finds it necessary to fill in his lines and many a painter and musician does the like with his pictures or compositions. There is much mere scaffolding and many lay-figures in drama and novel. But the work of the masters is different. There each line or stroke or musical phrase, each character or incident, is unique or meaningful. The greatest example of this is perhaps the Divine Comedy, where each of the hundred cantos and each line of each canto is perfect in workmanship and packed with significance. There is, of course, a limit to this elaboration ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... self-satisfaction, and a nonchalance of manner that was not a little more peculiar to herself than it is to most of her caste. I trembled for my disguise, since, to be quite frank on a very delicate subject, Opportunity had made so very dead a set at me—"setting a cap" is but a pitiful phrase to express the assault I had to withstand—as scarcely to leave a hope that her feminine instinct, increased and stimulated with the wish to be mistress of the Nest house, could possibly overlook the thousand and one personal peculiarities ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... equal horizontal bands of red (top), white, and black with three green five-pointed stars in a horizontal line centered in the white band; the phrase Allahu Akbar (God is Great) in green Arabic script—Allahu to the right of the middle star and Akbar to the left of the middle star—was added in January 1991 during the Persian Gulf crisis; similar to the flag of Syria that has two stars but no script and ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... He might have informed her that olov hasholom, "peace be upon him," was an absurdity when applied to a woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, although ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... world. Natural selection, of which the continuance of the race is the first and never neglected concern, invariably sees to it that no individuals are allowed to be produced by any species unless they have survival-value, a phrase which always means, in the upshot, value for the survival of the race—whether as parents, or foster-parents, protectors of the parents, feeders or slaves thereof. Our primary purpose throughout being practical, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... of the cougar is a common phrase. It is not very certain that the creature is addicted to the habit of screaming, although noises of this kind heard in the nocturnal forest have been attributed to him. Hunters, however, have certainly never heard him, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... proposals such as these, apart from their vagueness and their obvious impracticability in any form, are directly condemned by the fundamental principle that a man shall be responsible for his acts. The endowment of motherhood, as Mr. Wells means it, is simply a phrase for making men responsible for their neighbours' acts and for striking hard and true at the root principle of all marriage, human or sub-human, which is the common parental care of offspring. Reference is made to this proposal here, not ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... of consciousness to which we attain is expressed by the old phrase that man feels himself a child of God. His energy feels back of it an infinite energy. His desires rest peacefully in some all-sufficing good. All that is highest and purest in him mingles with its divine source. He sees new and higher interpretations of his own life and other lives. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... away? No, Lowell, no. That phrase, indeed, is scarce well chosen. We're glad, of course, to have you go More like a brother than a cousin; True, we must "speed the parting guest," If such a guest from us must sever; But what we all should like the best Would be to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... sight of the welfare of the people in a creed or a phrase or a doctrine, we have taken leave of our intelligence, and we have proved ourselves unfit for leadership."—A Letter ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... ceased, frozen with a new and splendid wonder, for their descriptive phrase was now inexact. Merton was no longer in a runaway. But only for a moment did they hesitate before taking up the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... before my arrival. The male relatives of Miss Penrhys did not repeat the insult; they went to Lady Wilts and groaned over their hard luck in not having the option of fighting me. I was, in her phrase, a new piece on the board, and checked them. Thus, if they provoked a challenge from me, they brought the destructive odour of powder about the headstrong creature's name. I was therefore of use to him so far. I leaned ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had to turn his eye up considerably before he could see the chambers, the phrase was to be taken figuratively ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... restricted conditions of her life she had never before had adequate temptation to a subterfuge. Even now, consciously reddening, her eyes drooping before the combined gaze of her little world, she had an inward protest of the literal exactness of her phrase. "Naw ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... term which corresponds in any degree to our epigram. That of Philippus has one word which describes the epigram by a single quality; he calls his work an {oligostikhia} or collection of poems not exceeding a few lines in length. In an epitaph by Diodorus, a poet of the Augustan age, occurs the phrase {gramma legei},[4] in imitation of the phrase of Herodotus just quoted. This is, no doubt, an intentional archaism; but the word {epigramma} itself does not occur in the collection until the Roman period. Two epigrams ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... feasts of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those who knew ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Alfred and in the effort fell partially over a settee as he sputtered out: "I'm a gemptman, what-smatter with Hanner." He intended to use the cant phrase, "That's what's the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... achievements or sufferings of its heroes cluster, are constantly shifting in the Assyrian nomenclature; both men and gods being designated, not by a word composed of certain fixed sounds or signs, but by all the various expressions equivalent to it in meaning, whether consisting of a synonym or a phrase. Hence we find that the names furnished by classic authors generally have little or no analogy with the Assyrian, as the Greeks generally construed the proper names of other countries according to the genius of their own language, and not unfrequently translated the original ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... indicated as "over the divide" meaning the continental water-shed-or "over the range" came to signify not a delectable land alone, but a sum of delectable conditions, and, ultimately, the goal of posthumous delights. Hence the phrase in use to-day: "Poor Bill! He's gone ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... The phrase seemed queer on the lips of that man's father's son; but I bowed very low, for I felt that I was already a captain of a man-of-war, with a big blazing decoration on my heart. Well, who lives, sees. I lived to see a lot of strange things in ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... There was no colour in her blotched face, and in the moonlight the red rims of her eyes looked leaden, and her voice was unsteady. At times it broke in sobbing croaks, and she spoke with loose jaws, as one in great terror. "I want you to know—" she paused at the end of each little hiccoughed phrase—"that I have not forgotten—" she caught her breath—"that I think of you every day—" she wiped her eyes with a limp handkerchief—"every day and every night, and pray for you, though I don't believe—" she whimpered as she shuddered—"that ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... remarkable boyish poems that we have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for maturity of purpose, and a nice understanding of the effects of language and metre. Such pieces are only valuable when they display what we can only express by the contradictory phrase of innate experience. We copy one of the shorter poems, written when the author was only fourteen. There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 2 (Causes for the American Spirit of Liberty) as an example of stately and elaborate, yet energetic, discourse. The speech from which this extract is taken was delivered in Parliament in a vain effort to stay England from driving her colonies to revolt. Some of Burke's turns of phrase are extremely bold and original, as "The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." Moreover, with all his fulness ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the idea of Justice what has been expressed by the ill-chosen phrase, 'perfect obligation,' meaning that the duty involves a moral right on the part of some definite person, as in the case of a debt; an imperfect obligation is exemplified by charity, which gives no legal claim to any one recipient. Every ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... forgiveness. His eyes glistened as he looked upon a couple who were obviously becoming attached, and who seemed made for each other. He thought how high the proud and chivalrous character of Ravenswood might rise under many circumstances in which HE found himself "overcrowed," to use a phrase of Spenser, and kept under, by his brief pedigree, and timidity of disposition. Then his daughter—his favorite child—his constant playmate—seemed formed to live happy in a union with such a commanding spirit as Ravenswood; and even the fine, delicate, fragile form ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was the sentence it gave, "And then to be fined forty pound." The Jury all cheered, though the Judge said he feared That the phrase was not ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... artist's sake but for the appreciator too. As art has its origin in emotion and is the expression of it, so for the appreciator the individual work has a meaning and is art in so far as it becomes for him the expression of what he has himself felt but could not phrase; and it is art too in the measure in which it is the revelation of larger possibilities of feeling and creates in him a new emotional experience. The impulse to expression is common to all; the difference is one of degree. And the message ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... Between the scene and you this curtain! So writers hide their plots, no doubt, To please the more when all comes out! Of old the Prologue told the story, And laid the whole affair before ye; Came forth in simple phrase to say: "'Fore the beginning of the play I, hapless Polydore, was found By fishermen, or others, drowned! Or—I, a gentleman, did wed The lady I would never bed, Great Agamemnon's royal daughter, Who's coming hither to draw water." Thus gave at once the bards ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... were empty, Ooblooyah's team shot by me, with Ooblooyah at the up-standers. Egingwah came next, and I threw myself on his sledge as it flew past. Behind us came Koolatoonah with the third team. The man who coined the phrase "greased lightning" must have ridden on an empty sledge behind a team of Eskimo dogs on the scent ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... and all such aids to work as forethought could arrange. There was for this special service a body of some hundreds of capable servants in special dress and bearing identification numbers—in fact, King Rupert "did us fine," to use a slang phrase of pregnant meaning. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word bye-laws for by-laws—so establishing solidly a shocking error. The word bye has no existence in England except as short for be with you, in the phrase Good-bye. The so called by-laws are simple laws by the other laws, and have nothing to do with any form of salutation. In a bill of the Great Western Railway I find the announcement that tickets obtained in London on any day from December 20th to 24th will be available ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... dormant memories? In a concert-room there may be a thousand souls; a strain is flung out from Pasta's throat, the execution worthily answering to the ideas that flashed through Rossini's mind as he wrote the air. That phrase of Rossini's, transmitted to those attentive souls, is worked out in so many different poems. To one it presents a woman long dreamed of; to another, some distant shore where he wandered long ago. It rises up before him with its drooping willows, its clear waters, and the hopes that then ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac |
